Assessment and feedback in the

digital age university

David Boud
Director, Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning, Deakin University
Research Professor, Institute for Work-Based Learning, Middlesex University
Emeritus Professor, University of Technology, Sydney
 Outline
• The current context of assessment and what
that implies
• What does assessment need to do?
• Key themes:
– Formative assessment/ feedback
– Student engagement
– Program-wide (to be discussed by Sue Bloxham)
– Digital enablement (embedded in everything)
 Why assess?
• Engage and direct learning productively
• Enable feedback
• Demonstrate and celebrate outcomes
 Outcomes are central
• International convergence on the importance
of representing courses in terms of learning
outcomes
• Learning outcomes are demonstrated against
agreed academic standards indicated by
particular criteria
• International discussions to establish agreed
threshold learning outcomes for each
discipline
 What is assessment (in the context of
learning outcomes)?
• Judging whether students can demonstrate attainment
of learning outcomes to a given standard.
• Transparent standards must be established for
assessment tasks
– Setting a pass mark is not setting a standard!
– Setting a general set of standards for a course is not
enough
– Use of terms such as good, superior, excellent does not
indicate a standard or communicate a level
• All assessment must be standards-based (criterion-
referenced)
– Norm-referencing is inappropriate
 What does this imply?
• All assessment involves identifying appropriate
standards for the tasks students undertake
• A range of assessment approaches must be used
appropriate to the learning outcomes to be
assessed
• The balance of assessment approaches must
reflect the range of learning outcomes
– eg. overemphasis on tests, examinations or any other
single measure is precluded
 What does it not imply?
• Standards are unilaterally applied
• Students are not involved in assessment
• All learning can be predetermined
• All learning can be easily measured/judged or
is worthwhile
 What does assessment need to do?
• Contribute to certifying student performance
– Summative assessment
• Provide them with useful information to aid
their learning now
– Formative assessment
• Build their capacity to make judgements about
their own learning
– Sustainable assessment
 Key themes
A. Formative assessment and feedback
– ensuring assessment really supports learning
B. Student engagement in assessment
– seeing assessment not as something ‘done’ to
students
C. Program-wide assessment
– How can the whole be greater than the sum of the
parts?
D. What else arises?
– Other pressing issues that must be considered.
 A. Formative assessment
• Formative assessment is a purpose of
assessment not a type of assessment
• Resources limit the amount of feedback
information from staff, so be very
strategic/selective in what we do and when
we do it
• Other humans (peers, practitioners) and non-
humans (eg. on-line self-testing and
remediation) have important roles, which
need to be clarified
Feedback needs to be properly
understood and embedded in courses
Feedback is about effects not inputs
• Feedback is not synonymous with comments
provided to students’ about their work
• Feedback cannot be said to occur unless a
student’s work is positively influenced
Implies:
course units deliberately designed to allow for
multiple feedback loops to be incorporated each
semester. Feedback is used where it is most needed
to match courses to student differences
 Feedback as Iterative Task Design
Nesting of tasks enables feedback loop to be completed through knowledge
of the effects of earlier information provision in subsequent tasks.
From Boud and Molloy (2013)

Overlap of
learning
outcomes
Degree of Overlap of Activity 3
task learning
outcomes
challenge
Activity 2

Activity 1

Time through semester

 What does feedback do?
• It bridges the gap between teaching and
learning, ensuring the curriculum is adjusted
to the needs and learning of students
• It cannot be enacted without the engagement
of participants—students and teachers.
• It only makes sense and it is necessarily
stimulated by what students actually do.
 What is feedback?
“a process whereby learners obtain information
about their work in order to appreciate the
similarities and differences between appropriate
standards for any given work, and the qualities
of the work itself, in order to generate improved
work”
Boud and Molloy 2013
 Elements of feedback we can
influence
• Location of tasks
• The nature of tasks involving feedback
• Who provides input to learners
• The nature of that input
• When that input is provided (vis a vis completion of
the task)
• What students are expected to do prior to the task
with earlier information
• Identifying that the input has been utilised
effectively
 For feedback to have an effect,
students must be engaged
• Through engaging tasks
• Through engagement with the processes of
feedback
• As initiators of feedback interventions
• As contributors to feedback for others
 What do/can students do?
• Be expected to act on feedback—at least to
respond to it
• Ask for particular feedback—position them as
active players
• Engage in a subsequent task in which they
practice in areas in which they have not reached
an appropriate standard
• Be expected to monitor their own achievement
What is sustainable feedback?
• Doesn’t continually need a teacher (or
teaching system) to generate
• Helps develop students’ judgement of their
work
• Develops learners’ capacity to identify
appropriate standards and criteria
• Develops learners’ ability to locate and
access useful sources of feedback
• Involves learners working with multiple others
in giving and receiving feedback
B. Student engagement in assessment
Why involve them?
• They need to know how to judge the work of
themselves and others
• They need to appreciate standards and criteria
for good work to be effective learners
• They can’t act effectively unless they know
what they know/don’t know, can/cannot do.
Every act of assessment builds student
capacity to judge work
• The most basic outcome of any course is that
students can judge good work
• This capacity needs to be developed over time
in conjunction with the assessment of tasks

Implies:
Identifying how the activities involved in each
task enable students to develop skills of judging
their own work and that of others
 How can students be more actively
involved in assessment?
Applicable to all students
• Through not being the passive recipients of assessment
acts
• Through choosing assessment tasks appropriate to
learning outcomes
• Through identifying standards and developing suitable
criteria by which to judge their work
• Through acting as sources of feedback information for
others
• Through being expected to act on feedback in
subsequent work
 Criteria for good assessment

1. Together, assessment activities address the different

purposes of assessment
2. Linked to full range of unit and (agreed) program
outcomes
3. Enables multiple feedback loops to be utilised
4. Aligned with learning activities, not just presentations
5. Tasks are worthwhile/significant in their own right (not
unnaturally contrived for assessment purposes)
6. Enables judgements to be made about whether all
students have met given standards
7. Equips students to judge their own work
8. Builds students’ capacity to continue to learn
C. Program-wide assessment
View student experience of assessment
across a program
• Students graduate from a program or course; the
external world expects the outcomes of the program to
be met
• Courses units are a means to this end
• Assessment needs to look across program elements;
unit elements must combine to lead to the program
outcomes

Implies:
much greater levels of cooperation and sequencing in a
program in designing assessment. Holistic assessment
planning
Curriculum mapping and alignment
• Undertaken to connect assessment tasks with
unit and course outcomes, including graduate
attributes
• Do the various course units enable students to
develop the planned outcomes, and are they
being assessed to ensure they have been
achieved?
• Is the balance across different units and over time
balanced and appropriate?
• Focus is on what is intended
 An example of a curriculum mapping tool
Curriculum Mapping Tool – Subject Overview
Spreadsheet (SOS): (Bajada, Lawson, & Lee)
• The SOS is a tool for curriculum mapping to plan for student
graduate attribute development across a whole program. It
collects data for course units, then produces a series of
tables so that course teaching teams can view the types,
weightings, and distribution of intended graduate
attributes, program and unit learning outcomes and
assessment tasks.
• The tables are used to identify ‘gaps’ or ‘overloading‘ in the
assessment design so subjects can be adapted to provide a
more appropriate balance for the students.
Download available from assuringlearning.com
 An example—Re:View
• ReView is a web application developed to aid
marking, feedback and graduate attribute
development.
• Student self-assessment and comparisons with
tutors is an option that can be selected for each task
• It enables students to track their development over
time

http://reviewsecure.com
Close up of staff marking screen with student’s self
assessment
 Resources
• Assessment decision-making for course units
OLT project: assessmentdecisions.org

• Assuring learning
OLT project: assuringlearning.org

• Feedback
University of Edinburgh feedback resources:
tla.ed.ac.uk/feedback/index.html

Re-Engineering Assessment Practices:

reap.ac.uk

• Assessment for future learning

OLT Fellowship: assessmentfutures.com
 References
Boud, D. (2014). Shifting views of assessment: from teacher’s business to sustaining learning. In
Kreber, C., Anderson, C., Entwistle, N. and McArthur, J. (Eds) Advances and Innovations in
University Assessment and Feedback. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 13-31.
Boud, D. (2015). Feedback: ensuring it leads to enhanced learning. The Clinical Teacher, 12, 3-7.
Boud, D. & Falchikov, N. (Eds) (2007). Rethinking Assessment for Higher Education: Learning for
the Longer Term. London: Routledge.
Boud, D., Lawson, R. and Thompson, D. (2013). Does student engagement in self-assessment
calibrate their judgement over time? Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 38, 8,
941-956
Boud, D. and Molloy, E. (2013). Rethinking models of feedback for learning: the challenge of
design, Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 38, 6, 698-712.
Boud, D. and Molloy, E. (Eds) (2013). Feedback in higher and professional education. London:
Routledge
Boud, D. and Soler, R. (published online 2015). Sustainable assessment revisited, Assessment and
Evaluation in Higher Education, DOI: 10.1080/02602938.2015.1018133
 www.assessmentfutures.com
Assessmentfutures splash